Side effects of the London Congestion Charge

As I said before in the blog, I have recently visited London. I had already been there some years ago, when no Congestion Charge was applied and the law has really changed the looks of the streets. For those who ignore what the Congestion Charge is, just say that is a fee for some motorists travelling within those parts of London designated as the Congestion Charge Zone.

This law has created a funny situation. Now the centre of London is posher than ever before since only rich people can afford to pay the tax on a daily bases. I was amazed by the number of Mercedes Class S parked around the city, unbelievable, is there an offer that if you buy three the fourth is free?. Another side effect of the law is that electric and hybrid cars are exempt of paying it, so the city is full of Toyota Prius and some sort of wee car called G-Whiz, an electrical and quite ridiculous car. Finally, I was amazed by the amount of mopeds ad motorcycles around. Since they don't have to pay the tax many people has chosen to circulate by motorcycle. It's funny, because I had never seen so many motorcycles on a northern Europe city (even though is far from the numbers of Barcelona). In conclusion, many times laws have weird side-effects that can deeply change the looks of a city.

The loneliness of Zapatero

In Catalonia (and in half of the world) to get even the crappiest jobs some sort of foreign language knowledge is required. This rule applies to all sorts of jobs except to politicians, because most Catalan and Spaniard politicians are monolingual. The president of Catalonia only speaks Spanish, not even Catalan, which he is learning at the moment, even though he has lived in Catalonia almost all his life. The former president Aznar was ridiculous when he tried to speak English, but his successor Zapatero is as bad or worse. He only speaks Spanish, nothing else. I wonder why there isn't a list of minimum requirements to be president of a country and I have to study like crazy to find a good job in the future. I speak, read, and understand four languages, why can't politicians do the same.

But Zapatero (as Aznar, Gonzalez or Montilla) has found out what happens if you are half-illiterated and you become a ruler, you end up being the target of all jokes. Just look at the following videos, in the first one, recorded yesterday he is isolated from all the NATO leaders because he is not able to communicate with any of them. Indeed a very useful country representative. The other two videos don't need comments.